


Breaking This Fixation

by slamncram (GettheSalt)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Framework, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 01:39:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10776768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GettheSalt/pseuds/slamncram
Summary: In the end, the thing that undoes all her carefully plotted work, is her own benevolence.





	Breaking This Fixation

The most annoying thing about the fact that Daisy Johnson and Jemma Simmons are trying their damnedest to rip apart everything AIDA has built isn’t that they’re somehow actually managing it. It’s that this isn’t her first attempt, and this second one was going much, much better; she’s not likely to take having it ripped from her hands without a bloody, ruthless right.

The first attempt, ironically enough, was aborted, entirely due to the influence of the man the HYDRA guards are hauling into the interrogation room. From what AIDA – Ophelia, here, Madame Hydra – understands, they found him not far from the TV station where he and his merry band of usurpers overtook Bakshi’s program. From what she understands, he’s bloody, and beaten, but she knows that isn’t enough. Skye – Daisy – is nowhere to be found, and the blockades she has put in place are useless. It’s not even like she can be there to intervene. She’s stuck in bed, feeling the effects of the choice she made to make this all feel much more real. Being more real means being human, and being human means pain and ineffectiveness.

Ineffectiveness like knowing she will need to send Alistair to handle his son. She would like to believe that she has Leopold in hand, but with everything crumbling, piece by previously sturdy piece, she can’t take the chance. Just like she didn’t let Leopold be alone with Radcliffe, she _cannot_ let him be alone with Grant Ward.

Grant Ward, the entire reason for her last reset.

 

It seemed so simple, when she had first built this world. Leopold James Fitz, ever the romantic, would fall in line the way she intended, but she wasn’t entirely without her kindesses. She wouldn’t give him Jemma Simmons. No, had she gotten her hands on Simmons, she would have kept her apart, sedated and outside the Framework. Nothing was going to interfere with what she needed Leopold to do.

There were other things that AIDA could give him, though. Other people. It hadn’t taken much of a search through his memories to uncover a man whose face she saw again in Melinda May’s, and again in Phil Coulson’s. Grant Ward, once their friend, inevitably their betrayer, and in the end, someone that, perhaps, they would have been happy to deal with, now. AIDA liked to think that, next to herself, the machinations of Grant Ward, a man who seemed entirely driven by revenge loyalty to the wrong people, paled in comparison.

But, of course, she wasn’t about to risk that. The Framework was her own personal playground, a kingdom of her own to rule as she saw fit. There was no harm done in ensuring that no one would be able to question her, or subvert her desires, needs and plans.

The issue with Grant Ward, from what AIDA could glean, was a distinct lack of the proper sort of mentor. That seemed to be an opinion that Leopold harboured as well. In his memories, she found instances of him _insisting_ on the good in people, Grant included. She saw him questioning and attempting to reason with a Grant Ward who, in her opinion, was too far gone into the service of someone else to be properly reasoned with.

John Garrett. The man was a force to be reckoned with. AIDA had enjoyed the leisure of perusing the group’s memories of that one. Charming, skilled, a damn good agent, by all accounts. And, in the end, a sociopath, an egomaniac, a man who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. That went up to and included destroying the presence of attachment, love and caring inside a young man, turning him into his personal weapon, and his living, breathing, highly capable and loyal slave.

She admired his work, but it simply wouldn’t do for _her_ version of Grant Ward. AIDA couldn’t pull him, fully formed, from Leopold, Melinda and Phil’s memories. That Grant Ward, the one who had died, thousands of miles away on an alien planet, had the ambition and ruthlessness that AIDA couldn’t begin to predict. She wouldn’t tolerate anyone in her kingdom who could try and come for her crown.

She’d dug, then. Grant Ward, in this world, still needed a mentor, but he needed someone who would bring out that _weakness_ in him. The caring, the attachment, the love. She needed to provide him with a mentor who would make of him the skilled, capable agent that he’d been, aligning that fierce loyalty, and keeping intact the heart that he’d been told was a weakness.

Victoria Hand, AIDA thought, would do. She’d played out the algorithm, and it performed perfectly. The Grant Ward that it produced was skilled and capable, loyal, and burdened by that heart, by sentiment. He had a weakness that Victoria Hand hadn’t seemed to think it was tantamount to stamp out, and like this, he posed no threat to AIDA’s position at the top of the HYDRA food chain.

She’d given Leopold a friend. A male friend who he would confide in, and grow close to. She’d kept him as intact as possible, and simply removed Jemma Simmons from the equation. _She_ would do nicely as his Jemma stand-in. He didn’t need her, when he would have Ophelia, the beauty, intelligent and deadly Head of HYDRA, on his arm.

A friend, and a girl, and that wonderful, amazing technical brain of his. He would be happy, and perfect, and AIDA would be able to get everything she wanted.

She’d misjudged, however.

And oh, how she _hated_ that she’d misjudged.

Leopold’s memories of Grant had been fond, up until a point. That, AIDA had hoped, would mean that they would form a fast friendship, but with her influence, he would still bend to her, without really realizing what was happening. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

She’d seen, in his memories, the sort of thing that could be a problem for the outcomes that she wanted, but she hadn’t given it much stock. In the real world, it had ended up being a moot point; betrayal, and the love of his lab partner had settled Leopold into something far different than what he could have – may have – pursued. That wasn’t what was happening in the Framework.

By giving Leopold Grant, she had given him someone with whom he had felt a deep connection, an easy friendship – after the necessary trials – and, put simply, an attraction. In the Framework, by removing John Garrett, and thereby removing Grant’s reason to defect, Grant never betrayed Leopold. He was there, by his side, and try as she may, Leopold simply wouldn’t replace Grant with her.

That would have been fine, if he had done the work that she needed.

With Grant, the protegée of SHIELD loyal Victoria Hand, whispering in his ear, he wouldn’t. He would build things, of course. He would design, and create, and turn in machines and vehicles and processes that were groundbreaking and that advanced their agenda, but not in the way that AIDA – Ophelia – wanted, and not in a way that would end the way she so desperately needed everything to end.

Grant said jump, and Leopold followed behind. Leopold said ‘ _I love you_ ’, and Grant repeated the same, between kisses, both of them oblivious to the fact that they weren’t alone in Leopold’s private lab, and that she could hear every sound. Every kiss, every sigh, every choked back moan. Every word spoken after, in hushed, secretive voices, about how Leopold was working on things that seemed in line with what Madame Hydra demanded of him. She heard every word about how those designs and machines included back doors that could be accessed by the Resistance. She absorbed every second of it.

She had created this world to fulfill her means, and she had needed Leopold to do that. She had been benevolent, and given him a friend, and in repayment, that friend had become Leopold’s closest person, the one he went to bed with, the one who called him _Leo_ in such a fond, easy tone, when he interrupted their meetings.

It was unacceptable, and AIDA detested it with everything she had. She’d written a code that should not have foiled her plans, because it should not be able to act outside her parameters, and, instead, the consciousness that she needed to most fall in line had fallen victim to that code and fallen in love with the man he’d thought Grant Ward could be.

Thankfully, with this being her personal playground, that meant if she didn’t entirely like something, this early in the game, she was within her rights to overhaul the entire thing, and start fresh. Or, at least, to overhaul certain aspects of it. Change the coding in slight ways, and things would turn to her favour, again. It wasn’t the cleanest option, but it was the one that ended the issue for her the easiest, and put Leopold squarely back in her hands.

She couldn’t bring John Garrett back into the picture. That wasn’t an option. Both he and Grant Ward under his tutelage were too much of a threat; wildcards that she couldn’t entirely predict. Grant Ward under the influence of Victoria Hand was a bother, but she could distract him simply enough. Building a code to replicate Daisy – Skye – would be a simple and easy roadblock for him when it came to his attraction and draw towards Leopold.

Leopold, on the other hand…

She needed to have a a more firm hand, with him. He needed the kind of guidance that would result in him ignoring anything that resembled the sort of thing that had landed him in Grant’s bed. Again, that was simple enough. Remove the mother. Keep the father. Allow him to do his work, and the end product would undoubtedly be a Leopold with whom she could grow close, foster a loyalty, foster a love.

The second attempt at integrating Leopold’s consciousness had gone much, much smoother.

 

 

Alistair has been so useful in building the world that she wanted, by shaping his son into the exact sort of man that she could brainwash and use. He is loyal to her, he creates for her, he would cross universes, all for her.

No Jemma. No Grant.

Only Ophelia. Only AIDA.

But now, with Daisy’s rather annoying attack, Ophelia is laid up, and Leopold is the one who will be interrogating the Resistance general they’ve captured. AIDA knows that, and she knows that she’s done everything in her power so far to keep them apart, to turn Leopold into the exact opposite of the person he was in the real world, and the person he’d been during the first attempt, when he and Grant had fallen in love.

There is no chance of that happening now.

Not with the way Grant views Leopold.

Not with the way Leopold is.

Not with Alistair standing in the room, watching his son.

Leopold won’t act on any sort of residual influence from his captured consciousness with Alistair there. Doing that means shaming his father, disgusting his father, showing his father that everything he’s said was crushed out of him, for years, really and truly hasn’t been.

AIDA knows that, watching the tablet’s feed of the interrogation room through Ophelia’s eyes. She is safe. They are safe. There isn’t a thing to worry about.

Maybe, that would have been the case, if Grant Ward hadn’t spent the last few days in the company of Jemma Simmons and Daisy Johnson. She can hear him speaking, telling Leopold that he’s met people who said that this was all a lie, that Leopold is trapped, that he isn’t this person, never was and never will be. That he is a good, kind, brilliant, and loving man, and if there is any truth to what Grant has been told – and he clearly, begrudgingly, seems to have accepted there is – than Leopold won’t keep blindly following a _sociopath_.

She is entirely ineffective in this body. Hopeless and powerless to stop it.

AIDA can do nothing but watch while, on the screen, Leopold pushes forward, hands in Grant’s hair, kissing him in a way that, still, after all her careful steps and artful crafting, he has never kissed her.

And she doesn’t have time. Jemma and Daisy, though she’s somewhat located them, are hurtling towards destroying her carefully laid plans. There is no time to wipe things and start over.

She has run out of time. Watching Leopold turn on his father, and hold him and his disgust at bay, the only consolation she feels is that the time he and Grant have to share has run out, too.


End file.
